At first, Matthioli was, by the direction of Estrades,[88] well-treated in his prison; but this was not by any means the intention of Lewis, and accordingly, we find Louvois writing thus to St. Mars. “It is not the intention of the King that the Sieur de Lestang should be _well-treated_; nor that, except the absolute necessaries of life, you should give him any thing that may make him pass his time agreeably.”[89] Again, in the same strain: “I have nothing to add to what I have already commanded you respecting the severity with which the individual named Lestang must be treated.”[90] And again; “You must keep the individual named Lestang, in the severe confinement I enjoined in my preceding letters, without allowing him to see a physician, unless you know he is in absolute want of one.”[91] These repeated injunctions to the same effect are a proof, how much importance the rancorous Lewis attached to his victim’s being compelled to drink the bitter cup of captivity to the very dregs. The harshness and hopelessness of his prison seem to have affected the intellects of Matthioli,[92] for after he had been nearly a year confined, St. Mars acquaints Louvois, that “The Sieur de Lestang complains, he is not treated as a man of his quality, and the minister of a great prince ought to be; notwithstanding which, I continue to follow your commands most exactly upon this subject, as well as on all others. I think he is deranged by the way he talks to me, telling me he converses every day with God and his angels;--that they have told him of the death of the Duke of Mantua, and of the Duke of Lorrain;[93] and as an additional proof of his madness, he says, that he has the honour of being the near relation of the King, to whom he wishes to write, to complain of the way in which I treat him. I have not thought it right to give him paper or ink for that purpose, perceiving him not to be in his right senses.”[94] The unhappy prisoner, in his phrensy and despair, sometimes used very violent language to his keepers, and wrote abusive sentences with charcoal on the walls of his prison; on which account St. Mars ordered his lieutenant, Blainvilliers, to threaten him with punishment, and even to show him a cudgel, with which he was to be beaten, if he did not behave better.